How do you improve your risk management practices?

The first step in improving risk management practices is to create a risk-aware culture within your organization. Encourage open communication and collaboration, and ensure that everyone understands the importance of identifying and addressing risks. Foster a sense of ownership and responsibility among team members, and emphasize the value of proactive risk management.

While the analysis and reporting for newly identified risks are done periodically, the project manager has to remain vigilant and have risk identification done on a continuous scale. Risks should be welcomed!

To identify risks, start by understanding the project or activity’s context and using techniques like brainstorming, interviews, and data review to generate a comprehensive list. Categorize the risks and provide clear descriptions, then analyze their likelihood and impact. Prioritize risks based on significance and document them in a risk register. Continuously monitor and review the risks, updating the register as needed. Involving stakeholders and remaining vigilant to changes is crucial for effective risk identification and management.

Developing and implementing a structured risk management process is essential for ensuring that risks are effectively identified, assessed, and mitigated. This process should include: Risk identification: Gather input from team members and stakeholders to identify potential risks and uncertainties. Risk assessment: Evaluate the likelihood and impact of each identified risk, and prioritize them accordingly. Risk mitigation: Develop strategies to minimize the impact of risks or prevent them from occurring altogether. Risk monitoring and review: Regularly review and update the risk management plan, and track the progress of risk mitigation efforts.

In my experience identifying risks can become trivial or seen as something to do at the beginning of a project. To avoid this, It is important to create a flow diagram that shows identifying risks happens along every phase of the project lifecycle. The flow diagram should be presented in the project plan or charter, and discussed in detail during the project kickoff meeting. Developing this awareness early on drives the project team to develop an urgency on capturing risks in all project activities. The project manager then can focus on formally documenting the risks and triaging each one for gaps, and build a more robust risk register that has more value for the team.

While the risk response strategy would have been captured in the risk management plan, but being adaptive is also important and not impossible. That should be our mindset to work through the response strategies.

In my experience this has been one of the weakest areas of a living Risk Management plan and implementation. It is too easy to do a "once and done" risk assessment and Risk Register population. Real reviews and attention to changing conditions are critical to making clear to the project team that the Risk Register is a living document that provides real insight.

Leverage Tools and Technologies: Utilize risk management software and tools to streamline the risk management process and ensure that risks are effectively identified, assessed, and mitigated. These tools can help you track risks, assign responsibility, and monitor progress in real-time, allowing for more efficient and effective risk management. Encourage Learning and Improvement: Continuously seek opportunities to learn and improve your risk management practices. Attend workshops, webinars, and conferences to stay informed about the latest trends and best practices in risk management. Encourage team members to share their experiences and lessons learned from past projects, and use this knowledge to refine your risk management process.

Higher experience: When you're entering areas of unfamiliarity seek higher experience or employ it. Sometimes if it is a new realm that has not been entered before all you can do is open it to all the experience at your fingertips to tap all resources. However most areas someone has been before so you seek out that experience at hand or higher it in. The biggest risk is always overlooking something that if overlooked becomes critical and all of us are limited because, "we don't know what we don't know". Awareness of that fact, intimate awareness, is one great way to stay humble, stay seeking and take steps before rather than later. So if one thing you take away may it be, " you don't know what you don't know." Stay on your toes my friends.